Julia Grace likens her experiences with depression and anxiety as “saddling up the Chihuahua”, her life a long series of "getting knocked off my high horse and getting back on progressively smaller horses."
Grace has had a successful music career, both with electronica band Elevator in the early 2000s and later as a solo artist, winning a New Zealand Music Award in 2006 for Best Gospel/Christian Album.
Photo: Supplied
She also found another voice, as a professional mental health speaker and has now compiled what she's learned into a new book, Be Kind to Your Mind.
Her diagnosis of depression and anxiety came after a crisis in her life, she told Nine to Noon.
“I found myself suddenly single at 40 years old with a whole bunch of things in front of me that I was dealing with, that I probably wasn't prepared for.
“And I realised that heartbreak and disappointment had turned into more than just something that was going to go away and was starting to turn into something that had become a bigger issue that needed some medical help.”
She talks about such moments as wobbly patches.
“I use the language of the wobbly point. The teacher in me is always looking for easier, more accessible ways to talk about the difficult topics.
“And talking about the wobbly point rather than clinical language around mental health and wellbeing means that people of all ages can perhaps express something that's quite hard to talk about.”
The jelly wobbles, but is still essentially fine, she says.
“Jellies were designed to wobble. And so, when they wobble, we notice that something is changing, but it's not the end of the world, we can do something about it.”
When talking about mental health she avoids words such as battle or fighting, she says.
“What I try really hard to do is to talk about dealing with it and managing it.”
She has a series of “F” words that she uses as triggers to manage those wobbly moments, she says - whanau, therapy, pharmaceuticals and fullness – even faffing around.
“Faffing around is actually so great for creatives, and what I've used as the further from it, but it's really giving yourself a chance to get bored.”
She likens her experiences with depression and anxiety as “saddling up the Chihuahua”.
“Dealing with mental health challenges has been a deeply humbling experience. And I like to say my life is like a long series of getting knocked off my high horse and getting back on progressively smaller horses and right now I am saddling up a Chihuahua.”
